


Sanguinarium

by 30xf



Series: 201 Days Of X Files [78]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 22:33:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10397661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/30xf/pseuds/30xf





	

"You ever think about going under the knife, Scully?" Mulder asks idly, flipping through grainy channels on Scully's motel room TV.

"I'm assuming you are referring to elective plastic surgery?" she clarifies, not looking up from her paper work.

Mulder rolls his eyes and shuts off the TV. "Of course I mean elective plastic surgery. What have we been dealing with the past few days?" he sighs, taking a swig of his beer as he comes to sit at the end of her bed. 

"Murder?" she poses, her head cocked and her eyebrow raised as she peers at him over her glasses. Her own beer is in her hand, half gone and soon to be followed by her third. It wasn't often that they indulged in alcohol after a case, but when they did, it was usually with an even split of a six pack. 

"Witchcraft," he corrects her, bending his long legs to sit cross-legged. 

Scully shakes her head, but makes no argument. She flips through the autopsy report on Nurse Rebecca Waite, but her mind has started to wander. "No, to answer your question," she clarifies, leaning her head against the wall and stretching her feet out beside Mulder.

He nods, not surprised by her answer. In the long list of things he admired about Scully, her confidence was near the top. "No nips? No tucks? No complete facial rearrangement?"

"When I was younger I wanted a boob job," she confesses, aware that she probably wouldn't have indulged this line of conversation with no alcohol in her system. But even she recognized the benefits of idle conversation sometimes. 

Again Mulder nods, stretching his long torso to the floor beside the bed where they left the last two beers. He grabs his last one and pops it open admitting, "Me, too."

"Mulder," she scoffs, kicking his thigh lightly.

"No seriously, Scully. There comes a point in most lonely young men's lives, I think, where they decide that if they only had boobs, they'd have everything they needed."

Scully stares hard at Mulder for a moment, squinting a little. "Well there's a mental picture I never thought I'd have in my brain." She shakes her head and downs the last of her beer.

Mulder laughs, "You're welcome for that."

"Okay then, what would you have done?" Scully asks, setting her file aside.

"What makes you think I'd have anything done?" he becomes bashful all of a sudden.

Scully rolls her eyes, "Come on, Mulder...I've seen you checking yourself out in just about every mirror you've encountered. And I saw you playing with that facial whatever software."

He looks at her for a moment and raises his eyebrows. "Isn't it obvious?" he asks, scrunching up his nose for emphasis.

Her only response is a puff of air from between her lips. Without a word, she leans across the bed on her stomach, past Mulder. She stretches until she has to brace one hand on the floor and reaches out to grab the last beer. It hadn't occurred to her, after watching Mulder grab his beer with such ease, that it would be so far away from the bed. She hesitates for only a second before pushing herself back up onto the bed with her one hand, and is back leaning against the headboard. 

Mulder watched the whole process wide-eyed. At first worried she was going to fall off the bed, and then mesmerized by how far up her torso her shirt slid, seeming to recognize basic human dignity and stopping just short of revealing her breast. He snapped out of it when the hand with her beer in it flung past his face, narrowly missing his nose. "I think you almost just broke my nose," he notes, watching as she readjusts her shirt and the pillow behind her back.

"I was just trying to help you out," she comments lightly as she cracks open her beer.

"That's not what I had in mind," he smirks.

After a drink, she considers him seriously. "You don't need a nose job," she says definitively. "It fits your face."

"This nose wouldn't fit anyone's face, Scully. But thanks anyways."

A comfortable silence passes between them, but Scully is thinking the whole time. Finally she inches closer to Mulder, sitting in front of him and crossing her own legs. "All right...there's one thing I'd have done," she confesses.

Mulder looks genuinely surprised. "Seriously?" She nods, but doesn't elaborate. "What?"

Scully looks down, picking at the label on her beer bottle. Finally she takes a breath and points to just under her nose. "This thing; this freckle." She thinks about it for a moment and corrects herself, "Not a freckle...a mole, I guess it is."

"That thing?" he exclaims. "It's tiny, Scully," he says, squinting and getting closer. 

She sighs, "Tiny or not, I've covered it up ever since I was allowed to use makeup."

Mulder rolls his eyes, just a little, at her vanity over something so small. "Is that all?" he asks, somewhat lacking in sensitivity.

Her head whips up, acutely aware that his eyes go directly to her mole. She looks back down. "My older brother used to make fun of me," she admits. "He said it looked like a booger. So I started covering it up. And I guess it just became something my brain thinks I have to do."

"It's barely even noticeable," Mulder muses.

He dips his thumb in his mouth and is halfway to her face when she pulls away. "Don't even think about it," she frowns, her nose turned up.

"Geez, I don't have cooties or anything."

"I'm a grown woman and I don't require a spit wash, thank you very much," she asserts, smiling in spite of herself as she scoots back against the headboard.

"All I'm saying is that you don't have anything to worry about," Mulder clarifies, reaching for the case file Scully had tossed aside.

"Well, despite the case we just worked, I'm not about to have any major self-esteem breakthrough right here on a cheap motel room bed."

Mulder nods, feeling the same. "I'm not sure if I've told you this before, but your brother is an asshole."

"You don't even know my brother," Scully chuckles.

"Am I wrong though?"

She raises her eyebrow but says nothing as she takes a long drink of her beer. It is a while before Mulder looks up to find her staring at him.

"What?" he asks, worrying out of habit.

"I like your nose," she says thoughtfully, her voice slurred just a bit from the beer.

He reddens, but nods, her seal of approval giving him a significant boost to his self-esteem. He tosses her the autopsy report. "Duly noted." After a moment something occurs to him. "Oh, and this," he indicates a spot on his right cheek. "This is a mole. That," he gestures towards her face. "Beauty mark." The last part is said to the bottle in his hand, and he misses the smile that crosses her face.


End file.
